Summary

In April 2020 we conducted a Global Survey on the sector-specific Impact of COVID-19. The results of the survey, a join undertaking between TCI Network and VDI/VDE Innovation, help to better understand how the different industrial and commercial sectors are hit by the COVID-19 crisis and the important role that professional cluster management is playing in supporting the industry to ramp up at the end of the lock-down and on the way to re-start our economies.

All industries represented in the survey have been negatively hit by the COVID-19 crisis but with a different impact in each sector; Tourism and Mobility are the more affected sectors while Life Sciences is the less impacted. In the way to re-start, clusters foresee different patterns of transformation, with Mobility and AgroFood as the sectors where a major change is expected, while ICT and Health are not expected to transform significantly. The more affected sectors will have to adapt new business models and innovative solutions that help in the mid and long term.

The survey also evidenced that the companies’ demand for cluster services in times of COVID-19 has changed. Traditional core services as Community Building and Business Development became important again but there are new and creative solution services that only more professionally managed cluster organizations can provide. Cluster  organizations with a more professional management and close-to-industry  operations provided more relevant support in times of COVID-19.

You can check the detailed survey results here. 

We want to thank each of the 67 clusters representing 6,500 businesses who contributed to the survey. You helped us in the global cluster community to focus the debate and to prove the clusters’ power to transform through collaboration in times of COVID-19. Cluster management organizations that will provide added-value services will help companies to ramp-up in the after lock-down phase and will demonstrate their ability to foster economic development in the reactivation of our economies.